Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially launched the nation’s 5G services on October 1, 2022, ushering in an era of ultra-high-speed mobile internet.
After the launch, like many industry experts, Srijan Pal Singh, who was the advisor for Policy and Technology to India’s 11th President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, explained what to expect from this technology in the coming years.
“The march of India into 5G technology is truly heralding a new era of Digital India," he said.
According to him, 5G is expected to impact a wide array of industries, including agriculture, healthcare, education and even governance.
He told News18 that agriculture will benefit in the way of better knowledge of products in real-time and enabling IoT-linked devices such as drones and equipment.
“The introduction of 5G-enabled technologies is anticipated to alter the telco and other industries by enabling a number of innovative, new technologies. Applications in the global economy powered by 5G technology are anticipated to produce more than $12 trillion by 2035," he added.
Singh stated that 5G brings unprecedented speed and low latency, allowing autonomous, or even completely self-driving, cars to become a reality on Indian roads.
He said that an autonomous vehicle is expected to generate up to 25 GB of data per hour, which can only be handled by 5G.
“Imagine, every year we lose over 150,000 lives due to road accidents – all this can be avoided using self-driven cars networked with each other," Singh added.
Additionally, according to the expert, to understand the impact of 5G, it needs to be highlighted that today people can get up to 100 Mbps (Megabits per second) data speed on 4G, while with 5G, this would touch up 10,000 Mbps (or 10 Gbps), about 100 times faster.
He believes that with 5G connectivity in place, India can truly unleash the dream of making knowledge economies in a village.
Singh also said that 5G is expected to bring the processing power to India’s 600,000 villages which resonates with Dr Kalam’s model of Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA), where he had talked about how Electronic Connectivity would be the biggest asset for India’s rural growth and economic empowerment.
However, as it is believed that 5G will boost the concept of Digital India, many would wonder whether it will make 3G and 4G obsolete.
Singh said “not immediately but just like horse carriages were replaced by cars – new, cheaper and better technology will be adopted by society in favour of older systems".
Explaining further, he said that in the short run, there is also a question of devices which are compatible with 5G. They are currently costlier, about 10-20% higher than their 4G counterparts. Also, the consumers already have older generation devices which, according to him would take time to replace.
India’s New Digital Road
The service is being launched in 13 cities, which means that it will be available to less than 10% of the population.
Singh mentioned that over the period 2023-2040, 5G technologies will contribute approximately $ 450 billion to the Indian economy, or approximately 0.6% of GDP.
According to the global telecom industry body GSMA, India will have 920 million unique mobile subscribers by 2025, with approximately 10% of those being 5G users, while other organisations have been more optimistic, quoting that figure as high as 20%.
As per Singh, in the short run, there will be a boost immediately for the IT-based industries and also for the ‘gig economy’. The power of IoT, networked devices, and the Human-Machine interface-based industry will see a significant impact within this decade due to 5G.
As of July 2022, about 70 countries, including the US, China and much of Europe, had 5G networks installed, up from just 38 in mid-2020.
When asked where he sees India’s position compared to the technology available in the US and China, he said that both the countries are a few years ahead of India in 5G implementation and “thereby we also need significant investments in speeding up the rollout of 5G".
He also pointed out that cybersecurity challenges could potentially arise in the 5G era.
Singh, who co-authored the book Target 3 Billion and Advantage India with Dr Kalam, suggested that 5G devices and network manufacturing must be indigenous as far as possible.
He believes that this will not only provide support to the economy, but also be important from a national security perspective.
The expert noted: “This is especially true for Chinese companies as the Chinese cybersecurity law compels all companies to mandatorily share all data with the government."
“Most countries, including India, have been wary of it. In fact, India has shut out Chinese companies from 5G so far. In the future too, we must stay vigilant of not just China, but any other foreign conspiracies and incursions in our 5G leap," Singh added.
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